Goldman Sachs Launches Data Service to Help Investors Analyze Crypto Markets

Global investment bank Goldman Sachs has launched a new data service in collaboration with MSCI and Coin Metrics to help investors analyze crypto markets. The new system is “designed to provide a consistent, standardized way to help market participants view and analyze the digital assets ecosystem,” Goldman detailed.

Global investment bank Goldman Sachs announced Friday “the launch of Datonomy, a new classification system for the digital assets market,” in collaboration with global index provider MSCI and crypto data firm Coin Metrics. The announcement details:

The new framework for digital assets classification is designed to provide investors, service providers, developers, and researchers a way to help monitor market trends, analyze portfolio risk and returns, and help build new products.

“Delivered as a new data service, Datonomy classifies coins and tokens based on how they are used,” the investment bank explained, adding that the new system can be accessed as a direct data subscription feed from Goldman Sachs, MSCI, and Coin Metrics.

For example, Datonomy divides digital currencies into Value Transfer Coins and Specialized Coins. The latter is further subdivided into Meme Coins, Privacy Coins, and Remittance Coins.

Decentralized finance (defi) and Metaverse are among the digital asset applications listed in Datonomy. Defi applications are divided into Decentralized Exchanges, Derivatives Trading, Decentralized Lending, Stablecoin Issuers, Prediction Markets, Asset Management, Crowdfunding, and Insurance. Metaverse applications are divided into Virtual Worlds, Gaming, and Non-Fungible (NFT) Ecosystems.

Goldman Sachs added:

This new classification system for digital assets aims to provide market participants with a consistent view of the market, allowing them to track trends across different industries, such as smart contract platforms and decentralized finance, screen assets by a range of different filters based on their objectives, and understand aggregated properties of these assets at the portfolio level.

Stéphane Mattatia, global head of derivatives licensing and thematic indexes at MSCI, opined: “We firmly believe a consistent and standardized framework for the classification of digital assets is essential to support investors’ ability to evaluate the market.”

Anne Marie Darling, head of Marquee Client Strategy and Distribution at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC:

The digital asset ecosystem has really expanded over the last couple of years … We’re trying to create a framework for the digital asset ecosystem that our clients can understand, because they increasingly need to think about performance tracking and risk management in digital assets.

Goldman Sachs formed a crypto trading team in May last year. The firm executed its first OTC crypto transaction in the form of a bitcoin non-deliverable option (NDO) in March this year. In April, the bank offered its first bitcoin-backed loan.

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